UCL Laws LLB student Gianna Seglias chosen for the Laidlaw Research and Leadership Programme

The Laidlaw Research and Leadership Programme is a prestigious UCL programme that makes available 25 fully-funded scholarships worth more than £10,000 each to current first year undergraduates. It runs at a number of high ranking universities and is becoming regarded as an indicator of exceptional academic and leadership promise.

The scholarship aims to create the leaders of the future through a mix of training and intensive summer research periods across three years of study.

Gianna Seglias said:

‘The programme runs for two summers and consists of two research projects and several weekends of leadership training.  This summer, I will be working with Professor Kristin Bakke and her team in the department of political science.  She is currently examining how governments repress civil society organisations that push states to honour their international human rights obligations.

I will be assisting by working on the creation of a cross-national database, as well as by doing some data analysis work and hopefully some qualitative research tasks.’

‘I have really enjoyed studying Human Rights in the Public Law course this year and I think this scholarship will allow me to situate some of the things I have learned.

More specifically, I hope working on the project will give me a better grasp of the kind of political contexts that various legal systems operate in. Next summer, I hope to submit a proposal for an independent research project in the field of laws.’

‘My experience so far at UCL Laws has been very positive. I’ve found that the teaching staff challenge us, but are also very willing to offer support where we need it.

It has also been wonderful to benefit from interacting with the UCL Laws community as a whole and my cohort specifically, which is full of very talented people with a wide range of interests and perspectives.’